Poor battery life?? Did you just swap SD cards????

Well here is my story. I got the Bionic on day 1. I had it swapped 3 times and the ext battery 2x. I called tech support 2x. I also went to 2 different stores and multiple forums and no one could figure out what or why my battery was just draining. I would get 7-8 hours with min usage on ext battery. Long story short. I came from orginal droid and just swapped my old sd card into the new bionic. Apparently the bionic did not like this and is constantly scanning the memory card and draining the battery. So, after removing all files from the sd card, formating the sd card and putting the files/folder back on it the bionic no longer scans the sd card. My battery life is where it is supposed to be. I used to lose 10% or more a hour just letting the phone sit on the table. Yesterday it drop only 10% over 6 hours. I cant take the credit for this. Here is a breakdown of what to do. Hope this might help someone else.
Originally Posted by fuccoI had my bionic and ext battery swapped out yesterday due to a draining battery issue. I charged the new phone to 100% overnight cleared the battery stats (rooted) and after 3hr 40 min hours i am down to 50%. It shows Media 36%, cell standby 29%, phone idle 23%, display 9% voice calls 3%. I am having the same battery issues with the new phone and battery. I am in 3g area so I have 4g off, the wifi and bluetooth are off. I am not playing games or have google sync running at all. I cant figure what is draining the battery. The is the second phone and 3rd ext battery i have. I do not have any task killers downloaded. Also, do you think i just need to drain and fully charge the battery 5-7 times to get its full potentital since I am am starting from scratch with a new phone/battery??? From what i read on the forum people are getting aroung 15-20 hours on the ext battery with moderate usage. Since i had the bionic on Day 1 with the ext battery i am getting 7-8 hours with light usage and cant figure out why?

On a side not since I am grasping at straws rooting will not affect battery life correct? I have had the orignal droid since day one and that was rooted. It would last me 14-15 hours with ext battery.

what setting should I have the phone too? I have it on "full performance" I want it to sync data only becuase i have beautiful widgets clock/weather on my homescreen i believe if i set it to somthing else and the data sync stops then the temp and time will stop. Is this correct?

I had the same problem and I finally figure out what was killing my battery. I was able to get about 5 hours out of the standard battery with almost no usage at all.

The problem is the process MEDIA killing your battery, and it also makes your phone hot

What I discovered is that when I got my Bionic, I took out the memory card from my Thunderbolt and put it in.
My memory card had tons of picutres, videos and some music files (ringtones and notifications).

The process MEDIA was always taking up CPU cycles due to DRM processes looking into the memory card at all the files, and for some reason, it does not stop. That is why you see MEDIA showing a higher % than cell standy and phone idle.

This is what I did to fix it.

First, backup your entire OLD memory card to a folder on your PC.
You can format your memory card at this point, or plug in the sd card that came with your Bionic. Either way, you want to format the external sd card after installing.
After formatting, reboot the phone.

DO NOT ADD ANY FILES TO THE MEMORY CARD.

Use the phone for a few hours and check your battery usage. MEDIA % should be minimal (about 2-7%)
If MEDIA still taking a big percent, over 15% per say, go to SETTING on your phone, APPLICATIIONS, MANAGE APPLICATIONS, select ALL from the TOP, select MEDIA STORAGE and select CLEAR DATA
reboot the phone

Tried to use the phone for an hour or two again

If you still have a problem with MEDIA taking up high % of your battery, REMOVE YOUR MEMORY CARD and reboot the phone

Once I was able to stop MEDIA from starting up, I added all my pictures back to the external SD card.
I tested for a day to make sure that MEDIA did not start up

I am now able to go a full day with no problem.

I have not try to add music or videos to the memory card as I dont want to trigger the MEDIA service to start up again.

Thanks for posting this. I am sure it will help folks out. I guess I "lucked" out. When I installed my 32 that was in my OG, I formatted it first, then copied my media onto it. Just seemed like the proper thing to do. In my mind, as my card had data and a lot of junk from apps on it, and as these apps needed to be on the phone media section, it did not make sense to just plug it in and go. Seemed like I would be asking for problems. But it does sound like there is a bug in this new sd/sd-ext that needs to be fixed.

Thanks for posting this. I am sure it will help folks out. I guess I "lucked" out. When I installed my 32 that was in my OG, I formatted it first, then copied my media onto it. Just seemed like the proper thing to do. In my mind, as my card had data and a lot of junk from apps on it, and as these apps needed to be on the phone media section, it did not make sense to just plug it in and go. Seemed like I would be asking for problems. But it does sound like there is a bug in this new sd/sd-ext that needs to be fixed.

Craig

Click to expand...

I did the same. Just like putting a used hd in a computer. Always start fresh.

Backed up my sdcard, then deleted everything off it, installed it in new phone, then formatted with new phone.

I thought this had solved my battery and always hot problem, but it has come back. I have NOTHING on the external memory card, have formatted it several times in the phone, cleared the data for the Media Storage and rebooted several times without the memory card installed. MEDIA isn't showing up in my list of battery hogs any longer, however the phone is still always hot and consuming battery quick. The standard battery lasts 4 hours tops with VERY light usage.

The only thing that stops this from happening now is using Titanium Pro to freeze DMService and DRM Protected Content Storage. As soon I do this, the phone starts to cool off and battery life goes back to normal.

The Bionic is rooted, I used Titanium Backup Pro to restore all my apps with their data from my Droid X, and it is debloated using P3Droid's toolbox.

Useful Searches

About DroidForums.net

DroidForums.net was founded in 2009 originally dedicated for the Motorola Droid, the first Verizon Android Phone. We have since expanded our community to cover all Android Phones, Android Tablets, and Android Wearables. We discuss various topics including Android Help, Android Device Reviews, Android Apps, Phone Accessories, Android Games and more. Our ultimate goal is to be the Internet's best and largest Android Forum.